When
the Founding Fathers structured the Constitution of the United States
they very deliberately contemplated every word before committing them
to paper. "We the People" were determined to get it right
by creating a system of government in which there were no kings or lords,
and where the politicians who made the law would be no more "equal"
than the lowest subject of the realm who voted for—or against—him.
The form of government that was being created by the Founding Fathers
would be the most unique government in the world. It would be a government
in which power was shared by a chief executive—the President of
the United States, the States—which were sovereign, and the People—who
retained the final word through the House of Representatives on the
amount of money the central government spent since the House controlled
the purse strings of the nation. (Under the Constitution, all money
bills are required to begin in the House of Representatives, giving
the people the right to decide just how much they would be taxed by
their representatives before the central government of the United States.
The US Senate cannot constitutionally initiate legislation that allows
the central government to dip into the pockets of the taxpayers. That,
by the way, was one of the first rights erased by the politicians. Sadly,
the People, who have never been good caretakers of their own liberty,
failed to notice.) Finally, as specified by the 10th Amendment,
all powers not specifically delegated to the Executive by the Constitution,
were reserved exclusively for the States or (not and) the People.

While
the federal government has been trying to flip-flop it for 222 years,
the Constitution constructed a system of governance in which the cart
was very deliberately placed before the horse.
Constitutionally, the People provide the impetus to move government,
not the other way around. The President is the agent of the States.
His job is to act as the emissary (ambassador) of the States to the
foreign capitals of the world. He was not designated as the Overlord
of government. (In 1913 the Wilson Administration erased the balance
of power from the Constitution with the fraudulent ratification of the
17th Amendment, creating a lopsided power structure that penalized the
People. On April 8, 1913 the eraser, artfully applied to the Constitution,
changed the Republic created by our forefathers into a parliamentarian
democracy.)

The
People and/or the States were to be the "boss." Recognizing
the fact that the Constitution, as it was originally written, might
not serve the evolving needs of the nation in the future, the Founders
penned into it a provision (Article V) which allowed future generations
to amend the Constitution to fit the world in which they lived.

The
procedure to amend the Constitution is very specific. Article V contains
138 words: "The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses
shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments of the Legislatures
of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing
Amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and
purposes, as part of the Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures
of three-fourths of the several States, or by Convention in three fourths
thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed
by Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the
year 1808 shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in
the ninth section of the first Article, and that no State, without its
consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate."
In simple terms, the Constitution provides two ways by which history's
covenant with the American people may be amended. By a resolution proposed
by two-thirds of both Houses of Congress, or by a Constitutional Convention
proposed by two-thirds of the States. In either event, a proposed constitutional
amendment requires the ratification of three-fourths of the States to
fuse it into the Constitution.

While
the US Supreme Court is the "court of last resorts" in the
United States and holds the ultimate responsibility of interpreting
the application of US law and the tenets of the Constitution, it does
not possess the right to legislate from the bench (i.e., it does not
have the prerogative to change the intent of the laws of the land, or
to amend the Constitution by coupling unrelated amendments to achieve
new meaning). Yet, once the Supreme Court was politicized by Franklin
D. Roosevelt in 1935 to protect the New Deal, Supreme Court justices
were not longer picked based on their constitutional law credentials
but for their political pedigrees. The plum in the pie of the presidency
was the ability to select one or more high court judges to protect the
longevity of the legislation that President crafted during his time
in the Oval Office. Roosevelt served for 12 years, one month and eight
days. He appointed eight justices to the high court. Only George Washington,
who filled the first Supreme Court, appointed more. Washington actually
appointed ten justices. Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, William Howard
Taft and Dwight D. Eisenhower each appointed five. Most presidents—if
they serve two terms—appoint 2 or 3 high court justices. A handful
appointed four.

In
1826 American frontiersman and US legend Davy Crockett successfully
ran for, and was elected to, the 20th US Congress. He was easily reelected
to the 21st Congress in 1828. Campaigning for reelection in 1830, Crockett
ran into intense voter backlash because his backwoods constituents in
Tennessee learned that Crockett had signed on to a humanitarian bill
that provided $20,000 to rebuild several row-houses in Georgetown that
burned one blustery cold winter night in 1829. Crockett signed on because
the fire left scores of people homeless. Stumping for votes, Crockett
ran into a farmer, Horatio Bunce who told him he was not going to vote
for the frontiersman. Asked why, Bunce told him that Congress had no
authority to give his taxes to private citizens, adding that, "...when
Congress stretches its power beyond the limits of the Constitution,
there is no limit to it, and no security for the people."
The voters in Tennessee rejected Davy Crockett in 1830 for giving taxpayer
money to a private project.

Reelected
on a promise of financial austerity in 1832, Crockett made a speech
on the floor of Congress on March 6, 1836 arguing against the use of
public money to make a grant to the widow of distinguished naval officer.
He said: "I will not go into the argument to prove that Congress
has not the power to appropriate this money for an act of charity. Each
member on this floor knows it. We have the right as individuals, to
give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members
of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money."

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Until
20th century politicians discovered the "commerce clause"
in the Preamble of the Constitution and construed it to be an "implied
power" of the federal government, politicians knew that the spending
power of the central government of the United States was specifically
limited to: paying for the construction and maintenance of Post Offices
and postal roads, and promoting the progress of science and the arts
by creating a patent office and maintaining patents on inventions and
copyrights on books and other forms of art. The central government was
also charged with the financial responsibility of raising and maintaining
an army and a navy. They also had a responsibility to police the high
seas in order to protect America's coastline.

To
pay for a functional central government that was required to oversee
that the plethora of laws that would be forthcoming to make sure they
were observed and obeyed; and to fund the federal court system that
would be required to enforce those laws and mete out punishment to offenders
who would require incarceration, also necessitated the construction
of a federal penal system. Further, the federal government was charged
with the responsibility of managing lawful immigration (including the
deportation of illegal aliens). The federal government was never given
the authority to spend taxpayer dollars on the types of vast, expensive
social welfare programs it created during FDR's New Deal or Lyndon B.
Johnson's Great Society. Nor does the federal government have any constitutional
right to give taxpayer money to other nations in the form of "foreign
aid."

The
authority of the federal government to spend the money of the taxpayers
was very limited by the Constitution. That is, until Congress and the
federal court system erased the 10th Amendment to allow constitutional
lawyers to argue that the Preamble of the Constitution (i.e., the introduction
to the document itself) was construed to be an implied right of government:
"We the People of the United States, in order to form a more
perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide
for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish
this Constitution for the United States of America." The preamble
then leads to Article I, where the authority to govern is defined and
delegated.

The
"welfare clause" is simply not a clause of any type. It is
merely a declaration that the People of the United States (not the US
government) created a society of laws that would guarantee the People
a system of governance that would protect them from this nation's enemies—foreign
and domestic; and also provide the People with an opportunity (not a
guarantee) to secure economic security for themselves and their families.

The
Preamble of that Guarantee is not a rite of passage for government to
seize the assets of the People and redistribute them to those lacking
the ambition or the know-how to sufficiently provide for themselves.
The Constitution does not guarantee economic equality. The federal government
collectively—the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches
of government—chose to empower themselves by erasing the 10th
Amendment, endowing themselves with authority they do not constitutionally
possess. The Judicial weighed in by holding, for most of the last 100
years, that the federal government is the superior government and that
the States, which created the central government as its tool, are construed
to be subservient to the federal bureaucracy. Yet, government used the
"welfare clause" to implement Public Law 82-352, 42 USC
21, the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Further,
in a stretch of legality, the Johnson Justice Department used Title
VII of Public Law 82-352 to prohibit employment discrimination
based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin by arguing jurisdiction
to interfere with the hiring customs of segregationist businesses in
the South if goods or services sold by those businesses were delivered
to them via Interstate commerce, or even if customers for their goods
and services did or could cross a State line to avail themselves of
those goods or services

Probably
the first clause to be erased from the Constitution in our lifetime
is found in Article II, Sections 2 and 3, and deals with the qualifications
for any candidate for the office to serve as President of the United
States. The Constitution stipulates that anyone running for the office
must be [1] at least 35 years of age, [2] have lived in the United States
at least 14 years, and [3] be a natural-born citizen. The fourth condition,
repeated 16 times in Article II, Sections 2 and 3, while not politically-correct
today, genderized the office of the presidency. Yet, that has not diminished
several woman throughout history from seeking the office.

The
first to try was Cornelius Vanderbilt's mistress, Victoria Clafin Woodhull,
who sought the office in 1872. Not only was Woodhull a woman, she was
also only 34 years old. Financed by Vanderbilt, Woodhull formed the
Equal Rights Party and chose former slave Frederick Douglass
as her running mate. The Woodhull-Douglass ticket was not on the ballot
of any State and, because women did not yet possess the right to vote,
the ticket received only 15,000 write-in votes nationwide. Woodhull's
candidacy was not taken seriously since, being born in September, 1838,
gender aside, she would still have been 34 at the time of her inauguration
in March, 1873. For that reason, history views Belva Lockwood, whose
name appeared on the ballot in several States in 1884, as the first
woman to seek the office of President.

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Civil
Rights advocates insist that Article II was degenderized by "magic
eraser" with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. In
point of fact, while the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote,
it did not provide them with the right to seek the highest office in
the land—an oversight that has been ignored by politically correct
office seekers, male and female, since 1920. In 1964, US Senator Margaret
Chase Smith [R-ME] became the first woman to have her name placed in
nomination for President by a major political party. Congresswoman Shirley
Chisholm [D-NY] was the first woman to seek the Democratic nomination.
She ran in several primaries in 1972 and captured 151 delegates. In
1984, Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman on a major
party ticket as Vice President. She was Walter "Fritz" Mondale's
running mate against President Ronald Reagan in what was the second
worst political upset in the nation's history. The Mondale-Ferrraro
ticket took only one State—Mondale's home state of Minnesota.
He took only 13 electoral votes. For part two click below.

Jon Christian Ryter is the pseudonym of a
former newspaper reporter with the Parkersburg, WV Sentinel. He authored
a syndicated newspaper column, Answers From The Bible, from the mid-1970s
until 1985. Answers From The Bible was read weekly in many suburban
markets in the United States.

Today, Jon is an advertising
executive with the Washington Times. His website, www.jonchristianryter.com
has helped him establish a network of mid-to senior-level Washington
insiders who now provide him with a steady stream of material for use
both in his books and in the investigative reports that are found on
his website.

The authority of
the federal government to spend the money of the taxpayers was very limited
by the Constitution. That is, until Congress and the federal court system
erased the 10th Amendment to allow constitutional lawyers to argue that
the Preamble of the Constitution...